BARCELONA

Nurse in charge: Estrella Gargallo

Entity/Agency in charge: Hospital Universitari Materno Infantil Vall d’Hebron

Description

The Projecte Germans (The Siblings Project) is an initiative related to family accompaniment and it consists in preparing and accompanying the siblings of babies admitted in the Neonatology ICU before entering.

The babies that are admitted in the neonatology units may present a great variety of clinical situations derived from their immaturity and, sometimes, pathologies that require special care. In these situations, even if they need to be in an incubator, connected to several machines, or receive special care, the direct contact with their family is still highly important.

The project consists in doing workshops that allow an approach to this situation through games: they can play doctors and nurses and take care of babies and cure them, and through this game they will be getting ready to meet their new brother or sister, who is being taken care of in an unusual place, and handling the devices connected to the baby to understand why he is admitted in the ICU. The sessions take place once a week in the Hospital’s CiberAula, a ludic and friendly place for the children.

The project, with the NIDCAP (Neonatal Individualized Development Care and Assessment Program) philosophy, incorporates a type of care focused on the development, which tries to prevent the potentially harmful effects that the neonatal ICU environment may cause on a developing brain, reduce the parental stress and improve the interactions between parents and children in order to contribute to a better development of these.